Nearly
a year and a half after celebrated novelist, professor, and Nobel laureate
Saul Bellow, X’39, died at age 89, the last of his professional
papers came to rest at Regenstein Library: letters, notes, galley proofs,
unpublished speeches and essays, hand-corrected manuscripts, and type-written
drafts totaling roughly 150 boxes. The documents chronicle the correspondence
Bellow, who died April 5, 2005, maintained with luminaries like John Cheever,
Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, AM’55, social-thought professor Allan
Bloom, PhB’49, AM’53, PhD’55, and English professor emeritus
Richard Stern. The papers also contain revisions to five works: Humboldt’s
Gift, The Dean’s December, More Die of Heartbreak, Something to Remember
Me By, and Ravelstein.

Bellow’s estate closed the sale with University officials in early
June, and the boxes arrived on campus in early August. They complete the
University’s Bellow archive, joining—as the author wished—a
vast collection of previously donated materials. “Preserving Saul
Bellow’s papers in one location is a tremendous gain for scholarship,” says
Alice Schreyer, director of the University’s Special Collections
Research Center. “Researchers will be able to study Bellow’s
development over the entire course of his literary career. Especially because
he recorded early ideas and drafts in spiral-bound notebooks, the archive
affords an extraordinary window into Bellow’s genius for language,
storytelling, and insight into human nature.”

The former Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner distinguished service
professor in social thought and English language & literature, Bellow
taught at Chicago from 1962 to 1993. “There’s a wonderful symmetry
to having all the Bellow papers housed at the University of Chicago,” says
Walter Pozen, AB’53, JD’56, executor of the Bellow estate,
calling the archive’s completion “an idea which I am sure would
give Saul great pleasure.”